Daily Archives: December 17, 2015

Lenders withdraw lawsuit against CW

Apr11 Greg Cross

CWCapital attorney Greg Cross (Photo courtesy of Venable)

By Sabina Mollot

It was the biggest bust of the last real estate boom, but a lawyer battling over Stuyvesant Town money claimed everybody won.

“Listen, everybody connected with this property is making a lot of money,” said Greg Cross, an attorney for CWCapital.

Cross was in court earlier this month defending his client’s right to a half-billion-dollar payment for services rendered during the period when CWCapital ran the complex and serviced the debt on the original $3 billion mortgage rung up by Tishman Speyer and BlackRock Realty which was sold to investors in five securitized tranches.

In October, investment giants Blackstone and Ivanhoe Cambridge agreed to buy the East Side development for $5.3 billion and signed a deal with the city to preserve 5,000 affordable apartments.

Ahead of the sale closing, the latest in a long line of lawsuits surrounding the complicated financing deals negotiated for the property drew to an end with the plaintiffs withdrawing their complaints.

Continue reading →

T&V toy drive deadline extended

Dec17 toys

Some of the toys already donated (Photo by Sabina Mollot)

The deadline for Town & Village’s annual toy drive benefitting Mount Sinai Beth Israel has been extended to December 21. This year the deadline for the drive was earlier than those of past drives (December 11), which was aimed to helping the hospital distribute the toys to the children it serves in a more timely fashion. However, T&V’s partners in this endeavor, CompassRock, Waterside Plaza management and M&T Bank, have generously allowed the use of their spaces for a longer period in order to accept additional donations.

At this time, toys and other gifts appropriate for kids up to 14 years old can be left at any of the following dropoff points:

Stuyvesant Town’s management office, 276 First Avenue in the First Avenue Loop

M&T Bank at the corner of First Avenue and East 23rd Street

Waterside, where donation boxes will be at the management office, 30 Waterside Plaza; the Health Club, 35 Waterside Plaza; and the Community Center, 40 Waterside Plaza

Town & Village office, 20 West 22nd Street, Suite 1503, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.

Due to hospital policy, all donated items must be new and unwrapped. All gifts are appreciated, though the highest need is gifts for older boys. Gifts from this drive go to children stuck spending their holidays in hospital rooms as well as families the hospital serves through its outpatient clinics, many of whom can’t afford to get presents for their children.

Town & Village would like to thank our partners on this project as well as our incredible readers who have donated already.

 

Letters to the Editor, Dec. 17

Cartoon by Jim Meadows

Cartoon by Jim Meadows

Affordability has been paid into by residents

Re: Letter, “’Entitled’ to affordability?”, T&V Nov. 26

I hope that the comments that I made on a Blackstone survey might keep Associated, an affordable and well-run supermarket, in our community. This would save the jobs of its many employees and prevent them from being among the “proud-to-be poor” that Benita Therock described in her letter.

In her letter, Therock also bitterly and benightedly refers to ST-PCV rent-stabilized tenants as being “proud to be poor.” She claimed that we “lack the pride and dignity to carry our own weight.”

I suspect that most stabilized tenants are like me. We came to ST-PCV as young couples and young singles with careers decades ago. We have carried our weight as residents of this community. We worked, paid our taxes, voted, raised families, participated in a variety of ST-PCV events, donated and volunteered at local schools, religious institutions, and at community-based charities. We spent our weekends cheering on our kids at Little League and soccer games, just like other Americans across this country.

Some of us long-time residents have gown older. We retired, and despite our savings, our money doesn’t go quite as far as before. But through rent-stabilization, we are fortunate to be residents in the ST-PCV community and in New York, the city that we’ve worked for, lived in and loved. This is home.

Name withheld, ST

Continue reading →